Give A Little Love

Grandma

The last two weeks have been filled with a lot fabric scraps and thread. My ongoing program to teach high school students how craft for charity has started sewing simple patchwork blankets. The idea was to get each student to sew simple quilt blocks of four squares and then sew everyone’s squares together to create a series of kennel blankets for the local humane society. I had no idea this project would stir so many emotions.

As I was cutting out squares for my students to sew, I found myself using my grandma’s block templates, seam allowance bar, and scissors. The memories came flooding back – summer at grandma’s where we learned how to sew. Grandma showing me how to hold a needle and how to pinch the fabric to make uniform stitches. Those wonderful memories made me dig through some of her old quilt patterns and I pulled one in particular.

Initially, I thought I would trace and cut the pattern pieces for students who exhibited higher level sewing skills. I sewed the first few blocks to remind myself how to work the pattern, but it quickly turned into something else. I realized I had inadvertently started this project two days before my grandma’s birthday. Perhaps it was subconscious action or kismet, but I could feel her with me. I ended up sewing every block and eventually pieced together an entire throw size blanket. The process was deeply cathartic.

Every skill she ever taught me came back, even though its been many years since I’ve sewn a quilt. I ended up with a beautiful little blanket that reminds me grandma is never really that far away.

The cat has already claimed it.

As for my students, they are learning quickly and we will be piecing together our first blankets next week. I made another blanket as a model for my students and even this project stirred some wonderful memories and sitting and sewing with my grandma. I can only hope my students feel the same kind of warmth – our little group has accomplished so much and we are all connected by what we’ve learned from one another.

– – –

c.b.w. 2017

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While most pages in Wreck This Journal are about seeing the world with a positive eye, one page in particular is set aside for recording good thoughts. This was easily one of my favorite pages as I have a “thing” for collecting quotations in journals, sticky notes, or anywhere else I can scribble a line of wisdom.

Grandma approached this page with her usual brand of quirkiness and independence. Not only did she record good thoughts, but she scribbled in anything that made her happy.

Grandma’s page of good thoughts.

Her handwriting is a little tough to read, so I’ll translate:

Grandma always loved a beautiful car. She pasted in a Mercedes Benz because it was one of her favorite brands, although she loved a good Jaguar, too. I remember how she’d walk right up to one in a parking lot and look in the windows. She never owned either a Mercedes or a Jag, but she never stopped dreaming.

Quote: Kindness is like jelly – you always get some on yourself.

Quote: God is good.

Quote: It’s not the amount of years in your life. It’s the amount of life in your years.

Quote: I feel good. I feel great. I feel wonderful. – Bob Wiley. I have to laugh at this because it comes from an all time favorite movie in our family, “What About Bob?” Get us all in a room and we could probably quote that movie from start to finish. Even towards the end when Grandma had forgotten so much, she still knew “What About Bob?”

Candy bars.

$ – This makes me laugh, too. Grandma loved money, but not like you’d think. Sure, she like the idea of nice things, but she also loved finding a penny on the ground. The woman found pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters wherever she went.

As for my page, I pulled some of my favorite quotes out of my main quotation journal. Then, I added some color, because color always makes me happy.

My page of good thoughts.

I should probably add one more thing to my page of good thoughts – memories of Grandma.

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While some pages in Wreck This Journal invite serious destruction or thought provoking creativity, others are just funny. One page in particular gives directions to collect fruit stickers. I don’t know why, but I found this pretty amusing as fruit stickers are usually a nuisance instead of an item worth collecting. Leave it to Keri Smith to make fruit stickers fun!

As somebody who eats fruit for lunch every day, I filled up my page pretty quickly. The organic apples I eat actually have two stickers – the typical round one with a bar code, number code, and name of apple and a long yellow sticker labeling it as organic. Apples are my favorite, (Gala and Fujis in particular) so naturally most of my stickers comes from apples! However, I do have a couple of oranges mixed in there, too. I suppose one of my great faults is not eating enough fruit, but it’s not because my grandma didn’t tell me to.

Apples, apples, and more apples!Photo by: c.b.w. 2014

Grandma’s page is filled with a wide variety of fruit stickers. She’s got everything from bananas, strawberries, apples, and oranges. Grandma always had a piece of fruit with her meals – breakfast in particular. At night she’d snack on bananas. She always offered me some, but I could never get her to understand that I don’t really like bananas!

When I was a kid, she would slice up an apple and put it out as a snack while my sister and I were playing. To this day, I’ll only slice up an apple when I want a treat (usually I just bite into a whole apple). It still feels special to eat an apple in slices because that’s the way she made it.

Apples, oranges, and berries, oh my!Photo by: c.b.w. 2014

Grandma broke the rules a little bit and collected stickers for vegetables, too. Her green pepper sticker really gets my memory going. She had a great recipe for stuffed green peppers and they were delicious! I’ve made them a couple of times, but they’ve never turned out quite as good as hers. When she made meatloaf, she always put a couple “rings” of green pepper on the top. Grandpa always scooped them off as soon as the meatloaf hit the table. Like her stuffed peppers, Grandma’s meatloaf was magnificent. I miss it like you wouldn’t believe!

I always promised Grandma I’d eat more fruit, but then I see chocolate. Sorry, Grandma, I’ll keep trying!

– – –

c.b.w. 2014

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One of my favorite pages in Wreck This Journal gives directions to document the passing of time. There are so many different ways to play with this prompt and so many interesting directions in which it could wander!

When my Grandma and I completed this page, we took the obvious route in some respects, but in others we offered our own unique perspective on the passage of time.

Grandma pulled out her scrap box and cut up an old calendar to express days, months, and a year. Then, she drew an alarm clock, which is something that cracks me up. She had an alarm clock that she really loved because it lit up when it went off in the morning. The only problem was she never heard it ring (she was a heavy sleeper) and therefore she hardly ever got to see it light up.

However, my favorite part of Grandma’s page are the trees she drew along the side. A baby tree growing into a taller sapling is such a beautiful way to document time. It reminds me of something she and my Grandpa did for my sister and I when we were kids. One summer, we planted baby pine trees and then stood beside them to take a picture. Every year, when we’d come to visit for the summer we’d stand by the same trees and take our picture to see how much all of us grew. The trees always grew faster than we did! I don’t know if those trees are still growing (the house has new owners), but I like to think they are still reaching for the sky.

Grandma’s take on time passing.

As for me, I geeked out as a history teacher and stole an idea from my Grandma, (it’s only fair – she stole my pyramids). I drew a clock and pasted in clippings of time from an old TV guide. Then, I doodled symbols from various eras of World History. My favorite is the boat, because never in a million years did I think I could draw something like that! One of these days, I’d like to continue this page to include the eras I wrote in the bottom corner of the page.

My job as a history teacher has me thinking about the concept of time on a daily basis – Is it always moving forward or is that simply how we perceive it? Are we that different from people who lived centuries before us? What was it really like to live in a time other than my own? Time it seems is a riddle that will keep me guessing until my time runs out.

My take on time passing.

The quote I wrote on my page has never meant more to me. I had 35 years with my Grandma and yet it only feels like five minutes. I’m grateful for the moments we had, what I wouldn’t give for more. Every day with her was precious, but there those moments where I wish I had more awareness of how fleeting time can be. If anything, reflecting on these pages reminds me to treasure the time I have with those I love. No matter how many years pass by and how much time we have, it will never be enough.

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Back in August of 2011, I began a series of posts where I shared my pages from Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal, (see Wreck This Journal: Letting Go). I did everything from utterly destroying parts of the journal to adding artistic flare to otherwise blank and boring pages. It was fun to share my journey of creative self-discovery, but there’s a lot more to the story that I haven’t shared.

I didn’t buy just one Wreck This Journal, I bought two. One for me and one for my Grandma. I mentioned this briefly in early 2012, (see Wreck This Journal: Memories), but I never wrote of it, again. At the time, I was just beginning to grapple with the notion that I was losing her. For obvious reasons, I chose to keep much of that struggle private.

Wreck This Journal was something we did together at a time when we first realized small pieces of her were starting to slip away. In the midst of so much difficulty and sadness, the pages of Wreck This Journal allowed us to laugh and have fun together. For that reason, the experience of completing the journal with her is among my most cherished memories.

Grandma’s journal is on the left, mine is on the right.

In the year since my Grandma passed away, I am amazed at how much joy there is in the memories I have of her and the time we spent together. I am even more grateful for a tangible reminder of her thoughts and personality in the pages of her Wreck This Journal. Rather than keep those memories on a shelf, I want to give them a place to thrive.

With that in mind, it was easy an easy decision to revive the Wreck This Journal series. Only this time around, I’ll be sharing pages that both my grandma and I completed. The last time I compared the two journals was when we were working on them in her craft room. In doing this, I’m hoping to find new connections and uncover forgotten memories. And, of course, smile and laugh along the way. She wouldn’t want it any other way.

It seems only fitting to start with a page reserved for making handprints or fingerprints. The directions seemed simple enough, but they leave door wide open for individual perspective.

Grandma thought outside the box a little bit and made an outline imprint of her hand. What I love about her mark is that she painted her nails and drew her rings. Grandma always had beautiful nails, even right up to the end. French manicures were her favorite, but she loved a good pink, too. Aside from perfect nails, Grandma loved her rings. She liked the way the sun make her diamond sparkle and she cherished the memories of her Irish claddagh ring.

Nice rings!

I was a little more literal. To make my mark, I pulled out a box of markers and inked my thumb in various colors. I ended up creating a picture of thumbprint flowers with a full background. Things were quite messy on my side of the table! Initially, I thought I made it because I can’t draw, but now I realize it truly does represent a piece of me. Every spring, my garden comes to life with seedlings and flowers. Plants and gardening bring me a lot of joy and I guess my thumb muse knew that!

My thumbprint garden

Despite such different interpretations of the directions, Grandma and I realized it all comes down to one thing: leaving your mark.